Health and Fitness

Tips on how to raise a happy and healthy family.

How I lowered my blood pressure naturally without medication (and lost weight as a bonus)

June 20, 2022 By Abel Cheng

Three months ago, I started an experiment to lower my blood pressure and cholesterol by changing my diet and lifestyle.

What triggered me to start this experiment is because I am stubborn and I don’t want to take medications. And I want to be proactive and take control of my own health.

Though losing weight is not my main objective, I got it as a side benefit from this little health experiment that I am going to share with you.

Let’s see what kind of changes that happened to me over the course of three months:

Weight loss: My starting weight was 75kg. I lost almost 5kg within the first month. Then it slowed down. Now I lost 10kg 3 months into my experiment. I am not saying losing weight is good as it depends on your body composition. For men, as you know, the most stubborn fat to lose is fat around your stomach and love handles. I am happy to say that I finally managed to lose the fat in those areas in more than 30 years! What a great side benefit to have!

Blood pressure: This is the main reason I started this experiment. The daily changes are minimal so I plot charts for my home BP readings to see if my BP is reducing or increasing over time. The charts are based on the readings I take every morning for the last 3 months. To see the trend of my BP even clearer, I bring out linear trend lines for the charts. As I can see from the chart, both trend lines of systolic and diastolic are trending down and within the healthy ranges.

blood pressure chart — Blood Pressure Readings

Cholesterol: Triglycerides reduced from 1.8 to 0.77. HDL 1.44 to 1.58. LDL 5.7 to 4.97

Fasting blood sugar: 5.9 to 5.2

Curious how I got these results? Here’s what I did:

I do intermittent fasting by skipping breakfast. I fast for 16 hours, give and take. I used to think fasting is full of crap. Why fast when you have an abundance of foods around you. But not anymore.

I skip snacks between meals. I used to drink Milo, 3-in-1 coffee, teh tarik, and my goto snack was Ping Pong brand cream crackers. I reduce bread and cut out totally cakes, pastries and sugar. I reduce intake of fruits. If I am hungry between meals I will eat a handful of nuts and seeds. You don’t want to eat constantly but only eat for main meals.

My diet used to consist of about 80% of plant based foods but I reduced it to 50% during this experiment. On the other hand, I increased animal based foods which include pork, chicken, beef, fish, shellfish. The most important thing is to reduce your carbohydrates (especially refined carbs) and sugar.

I changed my cooking oils to lard, red palm oil, coconut oil, ghee and butter.

I don’t count calories. I eat until I am full.

Exercise: I stick to the same regimen. No changes made during this experiment. So any impact on my health has to come from my diet.

In fact many modern day health problems are interconnected. Once you solve one problem, many things will fall into place: nice BP, low blood sugar, nice cholesterol.

There you go, that’s all the secrets I have. Don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

Ass-covering clause: The information here is only for educational purposes and should not be used as medical advice. You have to seek professional advice from qualified medical practitioners.

How I managed to run from zero to 7km without military style training

October 7, 2019 By Abel Cheng

When I first picked up running again in early 2017, I couldn’t even finish a one-kilometer run without stopping. I panted like fish out of water.

If you know me I am the least athletic person of all. When I was younger, I had always envied my friends who could run fast, jump high, play good basketball or football or volleyball. It’s never in my genes to be a leisure runner, let alone a competitive sportsman.

But I persisted.

Slowly, over a period of a few weeks, I could run 1.5km. And then 2, then 3. [Read more…]

This is what I did to lose 5 kg in 6 months

December 19, 2018 By Abel Cheng

After being idle for a few years, I made myself active again almost two years ago by picking up exercise. Here’s my story if you have not read it already: How I found time to exercise (And I achieved more than I thought)

Losing 5 kg in 6 months is not much and it’s not attractive compared to those over-hyped weight loss advertisements. However if you want a weight loss result that stays without taking the fun out of your life, you might want to take a look at my exercise routine. I am a living testimony to this and it works for me.

Before we go there let’s take a look at the record of my weight history:

December 2017: 73.3 kg
March 2018: 71.5 kg
April 2018: 69.5 kg
May 2018: 69.7 kg
June 2018: 68.8 kg

Currently I weigh 68 kg. My weight is kind of stabilized ever since.

Below is what I do to reach the current state of weight. Let’s dive into it.

[Read more…]

Nine Life Lessons from Haruki Murakami You Can Teach to Your Child

May 30, 2018 By Abel Cheng

I first came to know about him not from a friend’s recommendation but when I was leisurely browsing at a bookstore. I saw his name popping up many times on bookshelves. Due to his massive works, there were many books by him lined up neatly. That was how he got my attention.

I didn’t pick up any of Haruki Murakami’s books that day but I told myself I would like to read one of his books one day.

After a few months had passed, and I had totally forgotten about this until I made a visit to a local library last month, only then did I remember about Haruki Murakami when I happily found a complete collection (based on what I observe, at least) of his books were newly added to the library’s collection.

I was ecstatic. And I picked a few of the books to start reading. After finishing his first two books, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, I picked up his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir. Murakami wrote all but two novels. Out of the two non-fiction books he wrote, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir is one of them.

The book is short and simple to read. But it contains many lessons Murakami has learned as a novelist and long distance runner for over 25 years.

Not only does he set a goal of running a full marathon each year, Murakami has participated once in ultra-marathon (62 mi/100 km) in Hokkaido and numerous triathlon races throughout his life. He is also dubbed as “The Running Novelist.”

Haruki Murakami - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - A Memoir

Here are the nine takeaways from his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir which I think we can learn from Murakami and also teach them to our children.

You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
You can’t please everybody.
Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness.
I think I’ve been able to run for more than twenty years for a simple reason: It suits me.
Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they don’t continue what they don’t like.
The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.
It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride.
Whether it’s good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart.
To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts.

Why I Finally Allowed My Children to Have Dog

October 17, 2017 By Abel Cheng

K handed me a draft, written on a piece of A4 paper, to review.

It’s a simple table, if you want to call it that, that contained a list of tasks and their respective persons in charge.

The tasks comprised bathing, feeding, cleaning up, etc. They were distributed among the family members: J, K, wife, and me.

J and K approached me to get permission to have a dog. The handwritten “table” was a tool to convince me to let them have a dog as pet. I told them having a dog was easy but the chores that came with the dog were no joke. [Read more…]